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Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Museum skeleton workshop

We went to an interesting workshop at the Hancock Museum today about skeletons. We thought about what a skeleton does - holds up bodies and protects internal organs. We looked at some creatures with exo-skeletons too, including a scorpion. We looked at different animal skeletons (elephant bone, fish, snake and leopard skull) and compared things they had in common. We saw how the teeth can show whether an animal was a herbivore (short flat teeth for grinding) or carnivore (sharp teeth for tearing). We also looked at a rabbit skeleton and a stuffed rabbit to see which features are not shown just by looking at the skeleton, such as the fur and twitchy nose.The children labelled a model human skeleton and fit bone shapes into a human outline on floor mats. We looked at the different joints, including a hinge joint at the elbow and ball and socket joint at the shoulder.